Scene Manager - gauging interest in plugin

[alevey]

I'm considering developing a Scene Manager for HS as I feel it is needed but I want to ensure this will be valued before I dive into it.

The goal is to make it full featured and completely GUI based.

Below are feature ideas... please suggest other things you'd like to see AND vote!

Scene creation
- add devices/events to a scene
- multiple scene outcomes based on condition (time/day/etc)

Scene Mgmt
- track multiple scenes
- 'last scene' feature (go back)
- scene priority (gives one scene more control over devices then another)

[Stef]

It would be nice for me. I just don't have a large house with lot of lighting sources in each room.

[TechHA]

I do this now with scripting, having a nice interface would be a plus.

[nightwalker]

I also do this now, mostly with events but I have to admit it gets a little messy and can be hard to keep track of sometimes. Something simpler would be welcome.

[NicolaiL]

It's a good idea, but I think a lot of the functionality is easily done from within HST today. From my point of view an additional plug-in would need to provide either a much faster way to set up/manage scenes or additional functionality for it to provide value.

[kevin1]

I'm moving torward ISY controlled Insteon scenes via HS2 and the ISY Plug-in.

Would this scene manager work with the ISY Plugin?

-Kevin

[Steve Q]

I have Homeseer events that create "Scenes". They are easy to setup.
I'm sure a plugin could make this easier, but I doubt that I would convert my current events. They have evolved over several years.

Steve Q

[ArbWare]

Originally Posted by Steve Q

I have Homeseer events that create "Scenes". They are easy to setup.

Ditto

It would be worth $10-15 to me if it made it easier/quicker to set up sceenes... and if it had some script interface.. (not sure what i'd use it for.. but direct calls from scripts are nice to have in other plugin's)

But it's nothing that i can't do with events right now..

[darren-mc]

Excellent idea..

[alevey]

I hope the below examples explain the very basics of the Scene Manager concept.

For those of you that said "I can do this with HS right now", please explain exactly how you would create teh below examples and situations directly inside HS, not using other device or app. If you do this in script please post it as I've seen and heard nothing like what I describe below.

Example...

Your Scenes:
A - Light 1,2,3,4
B - Light 2,3,4,5,6
C - Light 1,2,3,4 (different dim levels then A)
D - Light 4,5,6 (different dim levels then B)

Situations:

Trigger B
- if you want to go back to the previous lighting, can you do this with one button? Does it know what the dim levels and which lights were on/off?
- does it know only to change the ones your scene changed?
- does it have the intelligence to change back using a conditional... e.g. it went from daytime to night time and you have a different preference for night lighting?

After you trigger B, trigger A
- Does it leave on Light 1?
- If not, how does it know to turn them off?
- Do you have the option to turn off or leave on 1 due to a conditional?

What if you want to go back to the previous lighting, Scene B?
- can you do this with one button and it knows what the dim levels and which lights were on/off?

Trigger C
- Does it leave on Lights 5 & 6?
- If not, how does it know to turn them off?
- Do you have the option to turn off or leave on due to a conditional?


With my proposed plugin...
it will handle all of these situations easily by using scene groups (scenes that "go together"), scene priorities, and the conditionals in HS. Using a simple interface (not HS's), it will walk you through building complex scenes and how they affect each other so the system will always know what you want to do based on a single trigger.

Example:

Your Scenes (same as above):
A - Light 1,2,3,4 (default, priority=1)
B - Light 2,3,4,5,6 (default, priority=2)
C - Light 1,2,3,4 (guests, priority=1)
D - Light 4,5,6 (guests, priority=1)

Scene Group Preference Order:
1) default
2) guests

Situations:

Trigger B and you want to go back... the plugin remembers your lighting and since A & B are a group, it knows to deal with both A & B lighting when it does an "undo".

After you trigger B, trigger A
- Does it leave on Light 1?
... Yes, it sees that A has a higher priority so it leaves it on. If B had a higher priority it would turn Light 1 off.

[ArbWare]

Wow... that is more "scene" management than i have right now...

And definately would be harder to do with events than what i'm doing..

Example of what i do..

Scene 1:
Light 1,3,4 on 100%
Light 2 left at current state (whatever it is)
Light 5 on 30% with Motion Detector bringing it to 100% for 10 minutes each time motion is detected.

Scene 2:

Light 1 on 30%
Light 2,3,4 off
Light 5 on 30% with Motion Detector bringing it to 100% for 10 minutes each time motion is detected.

Scene 3:
Light 1,2,3,4 on 100%
Light 5 on 100% with Motion Detector disabled (will not change value based on motion)

Each one is done through an event.. (with light 5 conditional being a virtual set from the event)

I have 3 buttons on a Controlinc programmed as follows:

Living Room On.. (Scene 1)

T.V. Mood lighting... (Scene 2)

Guests .. (Scene 3)


What you are proposing is much more versatile and powerful...

I'm just not sure if i would use the capabilities....

Maybe i'm just thinking too much "inside the box".

[zimmer62]

If I were to pay money for this, it would need to account for some things like turning the status of a scene off or on if the lights manually fit the description of what the scene was supposed to do.

An example is I have 3 scenes that are related to lights being off.

Basement Off

Upstairs Off

and House Off


right now when I have lights on in any order in the basement, the scene "Basement Off" still shows as being the current scene setting, unless I've set the scene "Basement On"

If the Basement is On, and I hit "House Off" It turns off the basement lights, but "Basement Off" is still not the current scene in the basement... which in fact it is true that the basement lights are off

Does that make any sense? So since I turned off the lights either manually or by applying another scene, I'd like all scenes that match the current state of the lights to either be on or off accordingly.

If it did that, I'd buy it.

[gearyt]

If it supported Leviton Z-Wave controllers I'dd buy it

[alevey]

Joe,
What you describe would be handled by my Scene Groups. You would associate which scenes "affect" each other (and which do not) using grouping and priority (which take president if scenes overlap devices when multiple groups are affected).

[zimmer62]

I'm not sure exactly how it should be handled but if a device that belongs to scene and that device changes state so that the scene is not set as described by the properties of the scene, then the state of that scene is off


I'll try and describe my scenes.

I have one called Basement On
In the basement I have several rooms that are part of that scene. (Theater, Game room, Bar, Laundry)

When I turn on that scene all the lights in each of those rooms are turned on and go to full brightness (I'm doing this with smarthome x10 switches and they all do this right away)

I might walk down the stairs and press "Movie Time"
which is a scene that turns on the theater lights to 30%, the gameroom cans to 30% the stairwell lights to 10%, bar lights to 15%, gameroom florescent lights off, and the laundry lights off

At this time homeseer still thinks "Basement On" is "On" and I have some scripts that will turn the status of "Basement On" to Off because it no longer is true.

If I press Basement Off, which has all of those lights in it, I need the status of "Bar Off", to also be set to "On" as it's in a true state as well.

The Bar On scene is when the bar lights are 100%

so when I turned on the "Basement On" scene, the "Bar On" scene should also show that it's on.

Does that make any sense? Basically I like to show the status of the lighting conditions current state on a touchscreen, and want all current true states to be highlighted as the current scene, even if it's more than one scene that is in a true state.


If that makes this too complicated or no one else needs this type of feature, I'll just continue to do this through scripting.

[alevey]

Joe,
What you are asking for is core to Scene Manager, and handled in Scene Groups. IF you set those as a group, it will know that they affect each other. This is actually the main reason I'm considering building the plugin.

Actually I do what you are talking about, manually, with some native features in HS right now, but it is not scalable or efficient and it is horrible to manage.

[zimmer62]

How would you handle devices that already support scenes like the Smarthome switchlinc type switches.

Right now I have almost everything working as expected but if I turn on a light that doesn't trigger a scene, it doesn't get handled by the events I have setup, and would leave the state of the "current scenes" invalid or wrong.

So could it monitor the X10 / zwave / whatever traffic, and or support polling so if the status a light changes in a group, it will fix the state of everything involved?

[alevey]

The plug-in would monitor the HS log to ensure it is capturing as much as it can.

As it standards there have only been 20 people that show (by vote) interest in the plugin. Anyone know the user base of HS? What about the # of professionals? I'd think this would really boost the functionality for pros?